A Fall of Princes (2 page)

But it was a long way to the Golden City, and his brothers
stood between. Vuad and Sayel whom he had trusted, whom he had allowed himself
to admire and even to love. To whom, after all, he had been no more than he was
to anyone: an obstacle before his father’s throne.

If it had been Aranos . . .

Aranos would not have failed so far of his vigilance as to
let Hirel escape. If Aranos joined in this clever coil of a plot, Aranos who by
birth was eldest and by breeding highest save only for Hirel, every road and
path and molerun would be watched and guarded. Hirel would never come to his
city. And this time he would die.

He would not. He was high prince. He would be emperor.

But first he had to escape this domain of the man called
An-Sh’Endor, Son of the Morning, lord of the eastern world in the name of his
false god. Whose priest sat close enough to touch, tying off the end of his
braid and stretching like a great indolent cat.

He rose in one flowing movement and went without haste to
don shirt and trousers and boots, belting on a dagger and a sword. He looked as
if he knew how to use them.

Hirel frowned. He did not like what he was thinking. He must
return to Kundri’j. He could not return alone. But to ask—to trust—

Did he have a choice?

Sarevan bound his brows with the long white band. Initiate,
it meant. A priest new to his torque, sent out upon the seven years’ Journey
that made him a full master of his order. Four disks of gold glittered on the
band: four years done, three yet to wander before he could rest.

“Priest,” Hirel said abruptly, “I choose. You will escort me
to Kundri’j Asan. I will see that no one harms you; I will reward you when I
come to the palace.”

Sarevan’s head tilted. His eyes glinted. “You do? I shall?
You will?”

Hirel clapped his hands. “Fetch my breakfast. I will bathe
after.”

“No,” said the barbarian quite calmly, quite without fear.
“I do not fetch. I am not a servant. There is bread in my scrip, and you may
have the last of the cheese. As for the other, I have in mind to go westward
for a little distance, and I suppose I can suffer your company.”

Hirel could not breathe for outrage. Never—never in all his
life—

“Be quick, cubling, or I leave you behind.”

Hirel ate, though he choked. Bathed himself with his own
cold and shaking hands, aware through every instant of the back turned
ostentatiously toward him. Pulled on the outsize coat and the ill-fitting cap,
and found a cord with the scrip, which perforce did duty as a belt.

Almost before it was tied, the scrip was slung from an
insolent shoulder, the priest striding long-legged out of the clearing. Hirel
raged, but he pressed after.

o0o

It was not easy. Hirel’s feet were bare and that was royal,
but they had never trodden anywhere but on paths smoothed before them. He had
done them no good in his running, and this land, though gentler than the stones
and thorns of his flight, was not the polished paving of his palace. And he was
wounded with thorn and fang, and still faintly ill from poison and purging, and
Sarevan set a pace his shorter legs had to struggle to match.

He set his teeth and saved his bitter words and kept his eye
on the swing of the coppery plait. Sometimes he fell. He said nothing. His
hands stung with new scratches. His knee ached.

He struck something that yielded and turned and loosed an
exclamation. The hands were on him again.

He spared only a little of his mind for temper, even when
they gathered him up. A prince could be carried. If he permitted it. And this
barbarian was strong and his stride was smooth, lulling Hirel into a stupor.

o0o

Hirel started awake. He was on the ground and he was bare
again, and Sarevan had begun to unwrap his bandages. Hirel did not want to see
what was under them.

“Clean,” said Sarevan, “and healing well. But watch the
knee, cubling. You cut it the last time you fell.”

“And whose fault was that?”

“Yours,” came the swift answer. “Next time you need rest,
say so. You can’t awe me with your hardihood. You have none. And you’ll get
none if you kill yourself trying to match me.”

Hirel thought of hating him. But hate was for equals. Not
for blackfaced redmaned barbarians.

“Up,” said this one, having rebound the bandages and
restored tunic and cap. “You can walk a bit; your muscles will stiffen else.”

Hirel walked. Sarevan let him set the pace.

Now and then he was allowed a sip of water. They ate barely
enough to blunt the edge of hunger. That must suffice, said the son of stone;
they might not reach the town he was aiming for before the sun set.

Hirel’s fault, that was clear enough. While Hirel struggled
and gritted his teeth and was ignored, Sarevan sauntered easily in his boots
and his honed strength, unwounded, unpampered, inured to rough living. And why
should he not be? He was lowborn.

o0o

“I’m a most egregious mongrel,” he said as they paused at
the top of a grueling slope; he was not even breathing hard, although he had
carried Hirel on his back up the last few lengths, chattering as he went, easy
as if he trod a palace floor. “I have Ianyn blood as you can well see, and my
mother comes from Han-Gilen, and there’s a strong strain of Asanian on both
sides. And . . . other things.”

Hirel did not ask what they were. Gutter rat surely, and a
slave or two, and just enough mountain tribesman to give him arrogance far
above his station.

He was up already, prowling as if restless, nosing among the
brambles that hedged the hill. In a little while he came back with a handful of
springberries, rich and ripe and wondrous sweet.

To Hirel’s surprise and well-concealed relief, having eaten
his share of fruit and given Hirel the water flask, Sarevan showed no sign of
going on. He paced as if he waited for something or someone; he turned his face
to the sun he worshipped, and sang to it.

Now that Hirel was not trying to sleep, the priest’s voice
was pleasant to hear. More than pleasant. In fact, rather remarkable. In
Asanion he would have been allowed to sing before the Middle Court; with
training he might have won entry to the High Court itself.

The sun was warm in its nooning. Hirel yawned. What an
oddity they would think this creature: a redheaded northerner, a sweet singer,
a priest of the Sun. All the east in a man. He would fetch a great price in the
market.

Hirel shivered. He did not want to think of slave markets.
His hand found its way under the cap, catching on the brief new stubble.

Three days now. And Vuad, whose mother was an Ormalen slave,
had shaken his mud-brown hair and laughed, cheering the barber on. Vuad had
never forgiven Hirel his pure blood, or the splendid hot-gold mane that went
with it.

“It will grow back.” Sarevan’s shadow was cool, his voice
soft and warm.

Hirel’s teeth ground together. “Get,” he said thickly. “Get
your shadow off me.”

It moved. Sarevan stripped off his shirt and rolled it into
a bundle and laid it in his bag, apparently oblivious to the offense he had
given. He went back to his pacing, tracing precise and intricate patterns like
the steps of a dance, humming to himself.

He stilled abruptly. Hirel heard nothing but breeze and
birdsong, saw nothing but shapeless wilderness. Trees, undergrowth, thornbrake;
the stones of the slope below him. All the animals they had seen that day were
small ones, harmless. None came near them now.

Sarevan made no move toward his weapons. His face in profile
was intent but untainted with fear. Hirel was not comforted.

The breeze died. The bird trilled once and fell silent. In
the thicket below, a shadow moved. Faded. Grew.

Hirel’s mouth was burning dry. A beast of prey. A cat as
large as a small senel, the color of shifting shadows, with eyes that opened
and caught the sun and turned it to green fire. It poured itself over the
stones, so swift and fluid that it seemed slow, advancing with clear and terrible
purpose.

It sprang. Hirel threw himself flat. The grey belly arched
over him, deceptively soft, touched with a faint, feline musk.

He never knew why he did not break and bolt. The beast was
on Sarevan, rolling on the hilltop, snarling horribly. And Hirel could not even
make a sound.

The battle roared and tumbled to its end. Sarevan rose to
his knees with no mark on him; and he was all a stranger, no longer the haughty
wanderer but a boy with a wide white grin, arms wrapped around the neck of the
monstrous, purring cat.

“This,” he said, light and glad and almost laughing, “is
Ulan, and he says that he is not eating tender young princelings today.”

Hirel found his voice at last. “What in the twenty-seven
hells—”

“Ulan,” repeated the barbarian with purest patience. “My
friend and long companion, and a prince of the princes of cats. You owe him
your life. He drew off the hounds that haunted you, and gave your hunters a
fine grim trail to follow. With a bloody robe at the end of it.”

Hirel clutched the earth. It was rocking; or his brain was.
“You—it—”

“He,” said Sarevan pointedly, “caught wind of you before you
crossed the border. I tracked you. Ulan headed off the hunters.”

“Why?”

Sarevan shrugged. “It seemed worth doing. Maybe the god had
a hand in it. Who knows?”

“There are no gods.”

One brow went up. Sarevan ran his hands over the great grey
body, stroking, but searching, too, as if hunting for a wound.

It seemed he did not find one. A sigh escaped him; he
clasped the beast close, burying his face in the thick fur, murmuring something
that Hirel could not quite catch. The cat’s purr rose to a mutter of thunder.

“They think that I am dead,” Hirel said, shrill above the
rumbling. “Devoured. By that—”

“By an ul-cat from the fells beyond Lake Umien. That should
give your enemies pause.”

Hirel managed to stand. The cat blinked at him. He
unclenched his fists. “They will not know. They will think of forest lions and
direwolves, and maybe of devils; they are superstitious here. But,” he
conceded, “it was well done.”

Again Sarevan loosed that astonishing grin. “Wasn’t it? Come
then, cubling. Ulan will carry you, and tonight will find us with a roof over
our heads. A better one even than I hoped for.”

Hirel swallowed. The cat yawned, baring fangs as long as
daggers.

And yet, what a mount for a high prince. A prince of cats.
Hirel advanced with the valor of the desperate, and the creature waited, docile
as any child’s pony.

Its fur was thick, coarse above, heavenly soft beneath; its
back held him not too awkwardly, his knees clasping the sleek sides. Its gaits
were smooth, with a supple power no hooved creature could match. Hirel could
even lie down if he was careful, pillowed on the broad summit of the head
between the soft ears.

Quiet, almost comfortable, he let his eyes rest on nothing
in particular. Trees. Shafts of sunlight. Now and then a stream; once Ulan
drank, once Sarevan filled the flask. The priest looked content, as if this
quickened pace suited him, and sometimes he let his hand rest on the cat, but
never on Hirel.

o0o

The sun sank. The trees thinned, open country visible
beyond, hills, a ribbon of red that was a road. On a low but steep-sided hill
stood a wall and in it a town. A poor enough place: a garrison, a huddle of
huts and houses, a tiny market and a smithy and a wineshop, and in the center
of it a small but inevitable temple.

They were seen long before they came to the gate. A child
herding a flock of woolbeasts along the road glanced back, and his eyes went
wide. He flung up both his arms, waving madly. “Sa’van!” he shrilled. “Sa’van
lo’ndros!”

The cry ran ahead of him, borne by children who seemed to
spring from the earth. They poured out of the gate, surrounded the travelers,
danced around them; and several hung themselves about Sarevan, and a few even
overwhelmed Ulan. Hirel they stared at and tried to babble at, but when he did
not answer, they ignored him.

Their elders came close behind, slightly more dignified but
no less delighted, chattering in their barbaric tongue. Sarevan chattered back,
smiling and even laughing, with a child on each shoulder and half a dozen
tugging at him from below. Obviously he was known here.

Hirel sat still on Ulan’s back. He was tired and he ached,
and no one took the least notice of him. They were all swarming around the
priest. Not a civilized man in the lot; not even the armored guards, who made
no effort to disperse the crowd.

Quite the opposite. Those few who did not join it looked on
with indulgence.

For all the press of people, Sarevan moved freely enough, and
Ulan somewhat behind carrying Hirel and a bold infant or two. One tiny brown
girlchild, naked and slippery as a fish, had chosen Hirel as a prop, nor did
his stiffness deter her.

She was not clean. From the evidence, she had been rolling
in mud with the dogs. But she clung like a leech and never knew what she clung
to, and he was too taut with mortal outrage to hurl her off.

o0o

The tide cast them up at last in front of the temple.
Small as it was, it boasted a full priestess. A pair of novices attended her,
large-eyed solemn children in voluminous brown who might have been of either
sex; but perhaps the taller, with the full and lovely mouth, was a girl.

They were both staring at Sarevan as if he had been a god
come to earth. But the priestess, small and round and golden-fair as an Asanian
lady, met him with a smile and a word or two, and he bowed with all proper
respect.

Her hand rested a moment on his bright head, blessing it.
Yes, she was highborn; she had the manner, and she had it as one bred to it.

Half of his own will, half of his body’s weariness, Hirel
slid from Ulan’s back and leaned against the warm solid shoulder. The child,
robbed of her prop, kept her seat easily enough, but her wail of outrage drew a
multitude of eyes.